VII
Garrick raged through the halls of the Private Place like a tiger. "Kathryn!" he shouted. "Kathryn Pender!"
The robots peeped out at him worriedly and sometimes they got in his way and he bowled them aside. They didn't fight back, naturally—what robot would hurt a human? But sometimes they spoke to him, pleading, for it was not according to the wishes of Mr. Trumie that anyone but him rage destroying through North Guardian Island. Garrick passed diem by.
"Kathrynl" he called. "Kathryn!"
He told himself fiercely: Trumie was not dangerous. Trumie was laid bare in his folder, the one that Roosenburg had supplied, and he couldn't be blamed; he meant no harm. He was once a little boy who was trying to be good by consuming, consuming, and he wore himself into neurosis doing it; and then they changed the rules on him. End of the ration, end of forced consumption, as the robots took over for mankind at the other end of the farm-and-factory cornucopia. It wasn't necessary to struggle to consume, so the rules were changed.
And maybe Trumie knew that the rules had been changed, but Sonny didn't. It was Sonny, the little boy trying to be good, who had made North Guardian Island.
And it was Sonny who owned the Private Place and all it held—including Kathryn Pender.
Garrick called hoarsely: "Kathryn! If you hear me, answer me!"
It had seemed so simple. The fulcrum on which the weight of Trumie's neurosis might move was a teddy bear. Give him a teddy bear—or, perhaps, a teddy-bear suit, made by night in the factories of Fisherman's Island, with a girl named Kathryn Pender inside—and let him hear, from a source he could trust, the welcome news that it was no longer necessary to struggle, that compulsive consumption could have an end. Then Garrick or any other psychist would clear it all up, but only if Trumie would listen.
"Kathryn!" roared Roger Garrick, racing through a room of mirrors and carved statues. Because, just in case Trumie didn't listen, just in case the folder was wrong and Teddy wasn't the key—
Why, then, Teddy to Trumie would be only a robot. And Trumie destroyed them by the score.
"Kathryn!" bellowed Roger Garrick, trotting through the silent palace, and at last he heard what might have been an answer. At least it was a voice—a girl's voice, at that. He was before a passage that led to a room with a fountain and silent female robots, standing and watching him. The voice came from a small room. He ran to the door.
It was the right door.
There was Trumie, 400 pounds of lard, lying on a marble bench with a foam-rubber cushion, the jowled head in the small lap of—
Teddy. Or Kathryn Pender in the teddy-bear suit, the sticklike legs pointed straight out, the sticklike arms clumsily patting him. She was talking to him, gently and reassuringly. She was telling him what he needed to know—that he had eaten enough, that he had used enough, that he had consumed enough to win the respect of all, and an end to consuming.
Garrick himself could not have done better.
It was a sight from Mother Goose, the child being soothed by his toy. But it was not a sight that fitted in well with its surroundings, for the seraglio was upholstered in mauve and pink, and the paintings that hung about were wicked.
Sonny Trumie rolled the pendulous head and looked squarely at Garrick. The worry was gone from the fear-filled little eyes.
Garrick stepped back.
No need for him just at this moment. Let Trumie relax for a while, as he had not been able to relax for a score of years. Then the psychist could pick up where the girl had been unable to proceed, but in the meantime, Trumie was finally at rest.
The Teddy looked up at Garrick and in its bright blue eyes, the eyes that belonged to the girl named Kathryn, he saw a queer tincture of triumph and compassion.
Garrick nodded, and left, and went out to the robots of North Guardian, and started them clearing away the monstrous child's-eye conception of an empire.
Sonny Trumie nestled his head in the lap of the teddy bear. It was talking to him nicely, so nicely. It was droning away: "Don't worry, Sonny. Don't worry. Everything's all right. Everything's all right." Why, it was almost as though it were real.
It had been, he calculated with the part of his mind that was razor-sharp and never relaxed, nearly two hours since he had eaten. Two hours! And he felt as though he could go another hour at least, maybe two. Maybe—maybe even not eat at all again that day. Maybe even learn to live on three meals. Perhaps two. Perhaps—
He wriggled—as well as 400 greasy pounds can wriggle— and pressed against the soft warm fur of the teddy bear. It was so soothing.
You don't have to eat so much, Sonny. You don't have to drink so much. No one will mind. Your father won't mind, Sonny. Your mother won't mind . .."
It was very comfortable to hear the teddy bear telling him those things. It made him drowsy. So deliciously drowsy! It wasn't like going to sleep, as Sonny Trumie had known going to sleep for a dozen or more years, the bitterly-fought surrender to the anesthetic weariness. It was just drowsy.
And he did want to go to sleep.
And finally he slept. All of him. Not just the 400 pounds of blubber and the little tormented eyes, but even the razor-sharp mind-Trumie that lived in the sad, obedient hulk.
It slept.
It had not slept all these 20 years.
SF: The Game-Flaying Literature
Science fiction is fun, otherwise it wouldn't exist at all. But sometimes, I think, it is more than fun, it is a way of looking at the world that cannot he duplicated in any other way, or improved on in some very important respects. And this short essay tells why I believe that.
My late collaborator, Cyril Kornbluth, once wrote a story called "The Only Thing We Learn." He didn't think it necessary to complete the quotation, or indeed to attribute it. He was, after all, writing for a science-fiction audience. Ess Effers are usually cynics and always time-binders. The message that the only thing to be learned from history is that no one ever learns anything from history is not news to them. In fact, the only quarrel an sf writer or reader might have with the statement would be that it is incomplete, and should properly read: "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history—unless we view history, both past and present, as a science-fiction story."
In order to see why this statement is true we must first explain what we mean by a "science-fiction story." This isn't easy, since the defining of the term "science fiction" has never been done in a really satisfactory fashion. Science fiction may be a story about the future, or a story about space travel, or a Japanese monster movie, or a political parable. It may also be none of those things. It may be about anything, anything at all, because that quality which most clearly distinguishes sf from non-sf writing has to do not with content but with method.
This is true, of course, not only of science fiction but of its collateral relative science. Most of us rather hastily and thoughtlessly regard "science" as a sort of collection of linear accelerators and space vehicles and organic chemistry models. In fact it is not any of these things; it is only a systematic method of gathering and testing knowledge, involving certain formal procedures: gathering information, forming a theory to explain the information, predicting certain consequences of the theory and performing an experiment to test the prediction. If you investigate any area of knowledge (whether it is stellar physics or the number of angels who can dance on the head of a pin) by this method, you are doing science. If you use any other method, you are doing something else.